


put out your beating heart

by louscr



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Needs a Hug, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Slow Burn, Tragedy, ghost kissin' time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louscr/pseuds/louscr
Summary: Tim keeps a tight grip on Martin's hand, his other arm draped across his back and resting on one of Sasha's still shaking shoulders. They don't try to move the blanket as they wait, huddled beneath it together, no longer bleeding but littered with bandages and fear.An hour later, just as the three of them are being ushered away, told to go home and take some time off, Jon staggers out of the institute, covered in dead worms and the remnants of the carbon dioxide foam, looking half-dead on his feet.Something desperate and tense, the part of him that is still so, so guilty, unwinds in Tim's chest.Jon is safe, they all are.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker
Comments: 31
Kudos: 273





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> was planning on waiting to post til i had the second chapter Fully complete instead of halfway but... here we are lol

Jonathan Sims is not made for running, but he's doing it right now, and he is terrified. He can feel the dull throbbing pain of worms beneath his skin and blood rushing in his ears and his own heart thundering unsteadily in his chest. Every step feels as though he's been saddled with weighted bags across his shoulders, slowing him as he gasps for breath. 

He doesn't think about how odd it feels to know his hands are trembling enough that he's lost control of them but to not actually be able to process it, to watch himself shake apart through sweaty palms and chipped nails.

He wants to scream as worms, filth, terror all smear beneath the soles of his shoes. Time barely feels real now, like the seconds have stretched out for miles, each heartbeat laced with fear.

He doesn't know where Martin is, where Tim is, where Sasha or Elias are. 

All he knows is that he is scared. Terrified.

All he knows is that the tunnels are twisting around him like a maze and there is something chasing him. Something that is not the worms, not the mess of writhing harmony smashed between his feet and the rough stone floor.

Something bigger. Something _worse_.

* * *

Tim is wrapped in bandages that match Sasha's, and they're both huddled under an orange shock blanket, stained with blood and grime, processing, watching as the emergency response team finally finishes checking Martin over for worms.

He thinks about a warm shower. He thinks about how glad he is that Martin and Sasha are safe now. He thinks about what will soon be scars and how the largest patches of them on both him and Sasha arc up the front of their right forearms but how the patterns of knotted tissue won't truly match up. He thinks about fear and pain and the night sky and oxygen after so long choking on carbon dioxide.

He doesn't think of being all alone in his flat soon, the ache of worms against his skin so fresh in his mind.

He doesn't think about Jon, probably dead by now, lost somewhere in the dark to that squirming mass. He doesn't think about running, the second pair of footsteps beside his gone before he even noticed that they were fading.

He doesn't because the thought is too familiar, too raw.

_ (Just like Danny, insists a voice curled in the back of Tim's mind, sharp and mean and fearful. He died alone and scared, and you didn't save him.) _

_ (Another part of Tim is nearly happy. It knows, somehow, that things are tipping towards catastrophe and is glad that Jon won't be there, will be spared the pain when the precarious situation finally slips and shatters.) _

Sasha's hands ghost over his, and she pries at his fingers where his knuckles have gone white until color returns to them. She doesn't lift her hands after, as though she can feel beyond the pointed distraction of Tim's thoughts to where something in his chest still reverberates with fear.

* * *

Jon takes a sharp left and, in his scramble, a mass of the god forsaken filth leaps onto his exposed arms and neck, burrowing into his flesh and singing with joy at the easy give of it. There is blood in his mouth as he bites his lip to keep from screaming, a strangled noise seeping from his throat and behind his teeth.

_ (He doesn't dwell on it, is too scared to, but something in him knows that this is where he'll die, alone and exhausted in a maze below the Institute.) _

_ (He wishes it were anywhere else.) _

_ (He wants to see the sun.) _

The world—or at least the tunnels, because that's all that is left of it for him—narrows into flashes of dark stone and that murmuring presence growing ever closer, offset by the searing pain, the communion of being infested, jolting sharp and bright across his nerves. 

His legs and chest burn alongside that pain, breathing ragged. 

Another turn and his shoulder clips the wall, showering him in more worms, squirming against and into his skin, sending him tumbling to the ground. Within an instant, he is being consumed, and he can feel the hive's hunger, their piety and celebration as they swarm over him joyously.

They reach his eyes before he can squeeze them shut, though he tries despite knowing it won't protect him, and as they burrow into the fragile sclera and Jon's tattered voice finally breaks on a scream, the last thing he sees is a face that is not his own, peering down at him with a serene smile.

* * *

They shift apart when Martin is deemed clean and usher him to sit between them, all three tucked under the garrish shock blanket, trying to keep the oxygen masks Sasha and Tim had been using intermittently untangled.

They both lean into him in an attempt to stop the tremors thrumming through his body when they notice him shaking. It's what they'd done for each other, so it is what they'll do for Martin.

_ (They'd gone through this hell together, and they'll make it out the other side the same way.) _

It takes him ages to finally settle, to stop rambling about the body of the old woman. "It was Gertrude," he whispers, that he had found in the tunnels. He doesn't ask about Jon. 

Tim keeps a tight grip on Martin's hand, his other arm draped across his back and resting on one of Sasha's still shaking shoulders. They don't try to move the blanket as they wait, huddled beneath it together, no longer bleeding but littered with bandages and fear.

An hour later, just as the three of them are being ushered away, told to go home and take some time off, Jon staggers out of the institute, covered in dead worms and the remnants of the carbon dioxide foam, looking half-dead on his feet.

_ (And Tim's heart beats a chorus of  _ "wrong, wrong, wrong," _ like he'll die if he forgets.) _

_ (The feeling, the call, fades on his next breath, and he draws in only relief.) _

His light hair is scrubbed through with grime and dust, legs shaking with exertion and eyes wide and panicked. 

Something desperate and tense, the part of him that is still so, so guilty, unwinds in Tim's chest.

Jon is safe, they all are.

When they're all allowed back in the archives, they will find out that so much of their work there was entirely destroyed by the worms' invasive burrowing, but for now, as Jon is checked for any live worms and the dead ones clinging to him are disposed of, Tim is just glad to be in the open air, and breathing oxygen again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tunnels are different. Darker. Closer. Wider. Jon can neither feel the walls nor the floor where he had fallen, but he can feel the corridors pressing in around him, warm and cold and numb. His skin burns where the worms had writhed against him, delved beneath his skin and _became_ him in their consumption. He feels nothing.
> 
> He remembers a face, not his own.

The tunnels are different. Darker. Closer. Wider. Jon can neither feel the walls nor the floor where he had fallen, but he can feel the corridors pressing in around him, warm and cold and numb. His skin burns where the worms had writhed against him, delved beneath his skin and  _ became _ him in their consumption. He feels nothing.

He remembers a face, not his own.

It's hair too light and smile too easy, traced with care-worn lines and age. It was not his face. He knows his own face.

_ (There are facts about himself that Jon knows, and the only one he can remember is that he has always had dark hair. He needs a mirror, and feels sick with the realization.) _

_ (There is not enough air here to hyperventilate, he can't feel his lungs to know the ache of it.) _

He wants to scream. He is scared and trapped between pain and numbness. He closes his eyes instead.

_ (Death is a much easier thing to fall into once you've accepted it.) _

Jonathan Sims does not open his eyes to those false tunnels again. 

* * *

A week into his time off, Tim's skin is crawling. 

The circular wounds where the worms had tried to burrow into his skin are still sore and foul, hidden beneath their bandages. 

He won't leave the house if it's been raining. It feels safer not to.

And it feels as if he's going crazy, stuck in this flat and stagnating, terrified and scared and small, and he  _ hates _ it.

_ (Visiting Martin and Sasha, and Jon when they can drag him out of hiding, helps, a little. But the institute, Prentiss, clouds their interactions, dampens the mood until Tim feels as if he can't  _ breath. _ ) _

And on top of everything, he's seeing Danny in his dreams again. The barest flash of his face in a crowd, disappearing around a corner, ducking into a little shop, ghosts to haunt him even as he sleeps.

Tim thinks it's one of those dreams when he realizes he's at the Royal Opera House again, the walls fuzzy and warped and indecipherable. He wants to scream, run as far away as possible, anything to not watch that thing flay his brother again, but when he looks up, as he always does, it isn't his brother that he sees.

There's a different man with a knife held up to his skin, eyes bright with fear and dark hair falling in his face. There are gaping, weeping wounds scattered across nearly every visible inch of his skin, the same size and shape as the ones that had scarred down Tim's arm and across his jaw and cheek.

He can't move as always, can barely hear beyond muffled sounds and disconnected thought, but he knows the man is screaming his name.

_ (Something in Tim screams back, his heart kicking further into gear and his chest aching with loss.) _

_ (I've missed you, where have you been, I can't lose you, Jo-) _

_ (No. This is not Jon. Jon made it out of the worms without a single scar on him. Jon smiles at Martin over tea and has short cropped, sandy hair and greets Tim brightly every morning. This is not Jon.) _

The man's eyes watch Tim so intently, as if waiting for him to understand something.

He wakes up sweating bullets, breath thick and caught in his chest.

The clock reads 4 AM, and Tim wishes fervently that the next few days would pass faster. He's beginning to miss the distraction of work.

* * *

He sits in his office, and watches the clock tick past midnight. Nothing is where it should be and it has stalled Jon in his tracks, hands hovering over the foreign and linear neatness of his desk. 

On its corner a picture frame rests, of Tim and Sasha and Martin and someone else, hair messy and light and hanging limply in his face, barely covering a vibrant grin.

_ (Once, Jon thinks he remembers, that frame had held a photo of him frowning, Tim's arm hooked loosely around his neck as Sasha laughed and Martin tried to pull them apart.) _

_ (Now it holds a face Jon has only seen the beginnings of through a mess of writhing filth and blood.) _

He tips the frame so the unsettling image is blocked from sight and sighs, resting his head into his palms at the center of the clean desk. Outside of the room, the archives' halls are empty and silent, glaring inwards. 

It feels like Jon's been here for hours, idling like something lost.

_ (He can't remember how long it's been since he died, alone, scrambling and desperate and terrified in the bowels of the Institute.) _

_ (Jon isn't sure how this works, if he has a heart anymore, but it feels as though it is beating out of his ribs at the muted memory.) _

The clock hits one and Jon, almost mechanically, stands to leave, feeling sick. Nothing about being here feels safe, even with the watchful gaze that had hidden in the room's walls before finally unable to find him. It is so fundamentally different to how Jon had kept the room when he was alive, and it sits nearly as wrong and sharp in his mind as the memory of that face in the down-turned picture frame. 

* * *

Despite how nice a break it is from only seeing his apartment's walls, Tim finds that returning the archives is boring, slow. Jon seems to insist on working at a snail's pace, even though all the work he'd done recording statements had been destroyed by the worms, and genially refuses any of them when they offer to record replacements themselves. 

It's infuriating, Tim hates it despite how much he appreciates Jon's kindness.

_ (But no. Jon had always worked this slowly, and Tim isn't sure why it's bothering him so much now. When they'd worked together in research it had been fine, they'd worked at Jon's pace and they had both been thanked personally by Elias for their work.) _

Something in Tim's mind itches, and for a second all he can see is Danny  _ (Fuck, Danny, no, not again,  _ **_NO!_ ** _ )  _ screaming, and then the other man, all pock-mark scars and wide eyes staring into Tim's  _ (Why is there no name there? There should be a name, why can't he  _ **_remember?_ ** _ )  _ whispering,  _ "it's ok, Tim," _ as blood pours from reopened scars.

There is a knock against the top of Tim's desk, snapping him from his thoughts and back into the archives. Jon smiles down at him, wide and sparkling and wearing his coat apparently having just gotten back from lunch, and Tim can't help but smile back. 

"Coffee?" he asks, brandishing the to-go cup in Tim's direction.

"Please," Tim replies, reaching for the foam cup. Once he's handed it over, Jon heads for his office with a short wave.

_ (Tim waves back and the motion feels wrong to its core.) _

_ (He can't remember a time when this wasn't the norm.) _


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching them work aches like a missing limb, like the memory of being engulfed and destroyed.
> 
> Instead of focusing on it, Jon reads statements, the ones that call in such a familiar song with the lyrics forged beneath his gaze, even though the Institute can no longer see him as he is now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip its been a while. i got hit with the guilt tm when i remembered how much yall were enjoying this so, have ch 3!! even though its probably a bit subpar... also, idk when i'll be able to write ch 4 but i do plan on doing so eventually.

Jon is leaning into Martin's side, laughing loudly at something Sasha had whispered to him over her drink. Tim can't take his eyes off of them, their quiet little pocket of the bar swelling with comfort, his heart stumbling through what he assumes is joy.

_(It feels different though, especially to the joy he's felt dragging Martin and Sasha out on a long lunches, the rise and fall of it too jagged and desperate and sharp.)_

To distract himself, Tim takes a swig of his drink then straightens in his seat, kicking a leg out to catch against Martin's beneath the table and tugs, drawing the man's attention and a warm laugh.

The noise bristles bright and perfect in Tim's gut and he can't help grinning wider, leg still pressed against Martin's as he bumps against Jon's shoulder.

_(It is so easy to ignore the way his skin crawls, to attribute it to a dying splutter of the failing air conditioner or bad insulation.)_

_(Nothing is wrong here.)_

He downs the rest of his drink and leans back, trying to keep his jaw from clenching too much, irritation coursing through his veins. Nothing is wrong here. Martin reaches across the table and as he stands pulls Tim up after him. They plunge into the crowd of dancing strangers for a time as the music rises around them and Tim almost starts to believe himself.

_(Later, in what passes for morning, Tim will still be drunk, curled up on Sasha's couch and sobbing into her stomach, unable to explain why he feels so twisted up inside or why the face that's been haunting him in waking and sleep tears so viciously at his soul.)_

* * *

Watching them work aches like a missing limb, like the memory of being engulfed and destroyed.

Instead of focusing on it, Jon reads statements, the ones that call in such a familiar song with the lyrics forged beneath his gaze, even though the Institute can no longer see him as he is now.

_(He does not know what the song he knows is, nor how it is his own, but it is and he can't draw himself away from it once he's picked up a file.)_

His death is ultimately, much the same as his life, and an idle part of himself hates the realization with fire and brimstone. 

The statements consume his time, draw his attention. He watches the assistants from afar, sees Martin and Sasha creak as Tim snaps and reforms over and over. 

The Jon who is not Jon revels in it, and Jon hates him like he hates this half-existence.

_(The song cascades through his head, discordant and overwhelming, begging to pull in the thing that is not him.)_

_(Fear stops Jon from listening. As much as he enjoys logging the statements, that song feels too much like the harmony of filth that he still feels flashes of in his memories.)_

When he's not reading or watching the life he lost, Jon practices.

He knows he can touch the statements, flip through their pages and record his own static filled voice on the tapes, but he isn't sure how far it extends. He hasn't been able to hold anything in the breakroom, but he'd briefly shifted the container of sugar closer to Martin the other day.

He does not let himself hope that one day, they will be able to see him, and know the him who is not as an impostor.

Distraction has become a necessity for what passes as his life.

* * *

Tim wakes up in a cold sweat, terrified. 

_(Fuck, Jon, no, not again,_ **_NO!_ ** _)_

It's become a running theme in his life, the sort of fear that winds through your lungs until you can't breath, and spreads through your veins with every beat of your heart until you can't move.

 _(Why is he scared? Jon is safe, Jon is safe, Jon is_ **_safe._ ** _)_

The sort of fear that kills your brother and steals his skin. The sort of fear that dwells in kindness and scars that should exist but don't.

_(Tim remembers seeing the blood on Jon's pant leg and the way he had limped.)_

_(Tim can't think of what that man looked like beyond sandy hair, was it long or cropped close? What color was his hair? Why was he not—)_

_(Jon doesn't scar easily.)_

Breakfast helps him calm down and, briefly, Tim contemplates calling in sick. He knows Jon wouldn't mind, and probably wouldn't tell Elias with how he'd been avoiding the man. 

But something in him wants to return to the Institute, so Tim heeds it, and falls into routine.

Before the hour is out, Tim is at his desk, studying it. It feels wrong, as though everything has been shifted an inch to the left. He stares, waiting for the obvious to pop out. 

_(Somethings wrong, something here is out for his blood like they were after Danny's.)_

His eyes catch on it and Tim tilts his head, confused.

A mug he's never seen before has replaced his own, it's only decoration a simple gray cat situated near the handle, and there is stale tea resting in the bottom.

Jon only drinks coffee, and Martin and Sasha left before him yesterday and haven't gotten in for the day yet, so it can't be theirs.

Something like ice settles against the back of Tim's neck.

* * *

Jon stares at himself and hates the monster that has stolen his desk. He is too tall for Jon's chair, but hasn't adjusted it. Jon's hair ties still rest near his pens, despite the monster's short hair. Everything is wrong.

 _(Jon feels like throwing up. That is not him, it's not his face, not his body, but every part of himself screams that_ **_that is Jonathan Sims_ ** _.)_

Abruptly leaving the room, Jon spots Tim in for the day, just staring into the mug of tea Jon had left on his desk the night before.

He hopes it'll jog the other man's memory, at least a little, since he's the only one that seems to be struggling with this transition to a false Jon.

_(It's not him, not him, not him.)_

_(He is real, Jon is real, He had dark hair, not light, was just the right height for his cheap, stupid desk chair and didn't escape the feasting worms unscathed.)_

_(He is_ **_real._ ** _)_

"Tim, it's going to be ok," he says to the man staring into the nearly empty mug of tea almost as much as he says it to himself, "This is fine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jon this chapter is the 'this is fine :)' meme and i truly vibe with that.

**Author's Note:**

> ghost au time! finally! im working on the shuffle au as well but like, wanted to finally post this one lol. anyways im [@aj-2884](https://aj-2884.tumblr.com/) on tumblr now!


End file.
